Gordon Dickerson : Defining Economic Efficiency of Beef Production
نویسنده
چکیده
Dr. Gordon E. Dickerson was a visionary and productive scientist whose many scientific contributions included a systems approach to the genetic improvement of economic efficiency of beef production. His most important contributions to the improvement of beef efficiency include: 1) insisting on an economic definition of the biological objectives of livestock production, 2) promoting multi-disciplinary approaches to the study of production systems, 3) comparing different domestic species to identify opportunities for genetic improvement, 4) elucidating the economic impacts of changes in beef cattle performance traits, 5) demonstrating the utility of index selection for genetically managing undesirable genetic antagonisms in production systems, 6) demonstrating the benefits of structured crossbreeding systems in exploiting heterosis and breed complementarity, 7) calling for value-based pricing of market animals to provide economic incentives for genetic improvement, and 8) stimulating a significant volume of experimental work targeted at answering scientific questions posed via his research.
منابع مشابه
Defining Biological Efficiency of Beef Production
“Efficiency” is a poorly defined and generally overused term in livestock production. The segmentation present in the beef industry provides wide latitude for limited, and potentially conflicting, definitions and makes achievement of an industry-wide consensus on the definition of efficiency difficult. Much of what we believe today about efficiency of animal production was introduced by Dickers...
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